Shuzhan(Eddy) Yuan

Time is not anything tangible or might just an illusion. Do humans apply watches and clocks to measure time or just an illusion created by motion and change?

Being fully in the present moment is the key to spiritual awakening, or to say the least, to live a happier and more liberated life. How can we balance the fact that we have to use time so often and stay more present? A designed way to alter time in this project is probing, letting people stay present or shift time unfettered to accumulate pleasure.

Don't Follow The Earth Revolution

The earth rotates and revolves at a relatively constant speed, which determines the relative constant of time. However, our consciousness is erratic and ethereal, so the time we feel is also a tortuous form. In Part1, I respond to people's subjective time needs in the form of an interactive app that can change the speed of time, and imagine an ideal state where people can subjectively manipulate the speed of time.

Do Not Be Defined By Time Numbers

No matter how time moves, fast or slow, constant or static, in fact, our lives are constructed by our activities. We follow our own style of doing things at our own pace, and time can only be used as a reference. In Part2, I conceive an events clock design that without time, but your events. Our daily life is not controlled by time, but by our activities, events and experiences.

The kitchen sponge is an undistinguished thing but common in our daily life. Due to the easy-to-consume property, the sponge is extraordinarily short-life and should be replaced periodically. As a result, thousands of discarded sponges are challenging to degrade and eventually become plastic waste flowing into the ocean and land. Besides, because most of the kitchen environment is humid and muggy, and the sponge is porous and easy to absorb water, once the sponge is not replaced timely, many bacteria can breed and eventually endanger our health.

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Biosponge is an alternative kitchen washing sponge consisted of terrafibre hemp and biological seeds. When we started using Biosponge, the internal seeds began to absorb water and germinate into green plants one to two weeks later.

Seed germination reminds people to replace a new sponge, thus avoiding bacteria growth. The user can place the discarded Biosponge on the window sill as a potted plant. Also, the terrafibre hemp made sponge is 100% biodegradable and compostable that could add to garden soil to help break up clay soils and increase water absorption.

I pretty much love sustainable design because designing them is not just trying to solve typical problems but demonstrating the product’s dynamic aesthetics. These products naturally contain vitality and vigour, using them is like gestating a life, accompany them to grow and leave.

Speculative Design: How to apply arthropathy patients predict the weather?

Measuring is an essential human perception to interpret this world and universe. We use meters, squares, and grams to measure an object, using percentages and vague language to measure abstract conception, such as forecast.

In nature, all kinds of rocks, plants, animals provide much information to understand this world and predict future events. For instance, a tree's growth ring could tell us the history of this area. The production of milk from cows connects with future earthquakes. My question is: can human beings measure some abstract conception by our body?

In this project, I'd like to explore a possible question: how to use arthropathy patients to predict the weather?

Most of us know that the arthropathy patient feels worse when it is going to rain. Also, there are some papers and experiment prove that. To summarize, there are two main reasons: one is barometric pressure especially falling, another one is temperature lowering.

My idea is to design a knee cap with a pain sensor and WIFI sensor to monitor the pain level of arthropathy patients and use these data to predict the weather.

When it is going to rain, the patient could take this knee cap to protect their knee or joint. At this time, the pain sensor will begin to work and detect the patient's pain level and send this information back to the website. The website could use these data to monitor a certain area's patient pain level and form a heat map.

When people browse this web, they could get the possibility of rain in their location by the depth of red, and the depth of red symbolizes the pain of these arthropathy patients. So more pain, redder, more likely to rain.